Screenshot from landscapeurbanism.com

I was recently delighted to be asked to contribute to a brand new website and online publication: landscapeurbanism.com. Founder and editor-in-chief Sarah Kathleen Peck is the driving force behind the initiative and it was a fantastic experience to work with her and her team on an article for the inaugural issue themed around ideas of “Indeterminacy and multiplicity”. The piece is titled “Landscape urbanism: definitions and trajectory” and seeks to examine how landscape urbanism – and parallel practices – have evolved in the past decade. The website looks great and has a growing body of supporting work in addition to the specific issues. I look forward to reading the next issue!

"Planbook" from Adjustment Bureau

I watched the (very underrated) Adjustment Bureau last night and was struck by the fantastic animated ‘planbooks’ supposedly created by ‘The Chairman’ which map out an individual’s path through life. I don’t want to spoil the film, so won’t go into the detail of how it unfolds, but I was intrigued enough by the beautiful illustrated books that I dug around to find out who created the visual effects. This article on the Art of VFX blog has an interview with J. John Corbett the Animation & Design Supervisor for Brainstorm Digital who created the various effects. Definitely worth a read and the article has some decent screen grabs of relevant frames from the film so you can explore the detail at leisure. I feel a project to recreate one forming!

Love this image. Have no idea where it is though! via Vulgare

Gross.Max Tempelhof Park

I haven’t seen much coverage of this yet, but I’m sure more will appear soon. Gross.Max recently won a huge competition to design the new park at Berlin’s former Tempelhof airport grounds. This article in Progetti (I think?!) gets a reasonably readable translation via google. Update: Some more background in the Scotsman.

A concrete star burst in the montains

Not sure when these were originally shot, but photographer Jan Kempenaers has taken a tour of WWII sites in former Yugoslavia to record  the decaying but fantastic concrete sculptures of the 60s and 70s. Some further details from a website called Crack Two

These structures were commissioned by former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito in the 1960s and 70s to commemorate sites where WWII battles took place (like Tjentište, Kozara and Kadinjača), or where concentration camps stood (like Jasenovac and Niš). They were designed by different sculptors (Dušan Džamonja, Vojin Bakić, Miodrag Živković, Jordan and Iskra Grabul, to name a few) and architects (Bogdan Bogdanović, Gradimir Medaković…), conveying powerful visual impact to show the confidence and strength of the Socialist Republic. In the 1980s, these monuments attracted millions of visitors per year, especially young pioneers for their “patriotic education.” After the Republic dissolved in early 1990s, they were completely abandoned, and their symbolic meanings were forever lost.

Interestingly the book of the photographs seems to have been written by architect Willem Jan Neutelings.

via Urban Change

[OMA]